


think on your sins

by ohmytheon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Assassins & Hitmen, F/M, Shameless Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-08 14:38:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3212780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmytheon/pseuds/ohmytheon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's an assassin. He's an assassin. Of course it makes sense that they get coffee, get lunch, maybe a little more... It makes no sense and yet to Catelyn it's the calm before the storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They meet for coffee on a different day three times a month, sometimes more, but never less. Catelyn has always preferred to have set times and dates, but that would make things too predictable and Tywin would become uncomfortable and there would be scares about them “getting found out” or whatever other paranoid scheme Tywin can concoct. On nearly every level, she understands why he thinks this way and completely agrees with him, but somewhere deep down, she wishes they could meet every Tuesday at eleven in the morning at the same coffee shop like normal people.

But they’re not normal people – they didn’t choose a normal line of work – and so the ability to have a set time and place is something they must sacrifice in order to indulge one of their guilty pleasures.

She receives a coded text at approximately seven in the morning. She ignores it until after eight when her youngest son Rickon walks into his preschool class. Shielding her cell from the sun, she looks down at the message and tilts her head. He’s always so cryptic about these things, to the point where he won’t even contact her on her personal or professional cells. She enjoys these little games, though she’s not so sure he enjoys inventing them.

By twenty after eleven, she’s sitting in the corner of a coffee shop on Sixth Street, a seat that gives her a very good view of all the exits in the restaurant and makes it so she doesn’t have her back to anyone. Tywin will be frustrated that she has taken what is typically his spot, but that’s what he gets for showing up exactly on time instead of early.

As she waits, she likes to watch over the people in the shop and make up stories for them, simple things that don’t have any foreboding concerns. A woman writing furiously in a notebook by the window and forgetting her coffee is a blooming author; a man scrolling almost fondly on his tablet is looking at pictures of his newborn son halfway across the country. She likes these cheery stories. They almost make up for the fact that everyone dies in the end of every story.

When he finally arrives, holding a hot cup of coffee that is never the same as his last cup, there is a small frown on his face and his eyes are shaded by his hat.

“This place was rather easy to figure out,” Catelyn says by way of greeting. “I caught on to a pattern.”

“You’re forcing me to sit in this position on purpose,” Tywin responds, glancing at the empty seat opposite of her, which will force him to put his back to the door. He hates sitting like that, just as much as she does.

“It’s good to break the habit every now and then - keeps you from becoming too paranoid about things. Come now, you’re starting to act obsessive about these things. Relax.” Here, her lips quirk upwards into an almost playful smile. “That is, unless, you’d like to sit next to me on the booth side. There’s room for two over here.”

Glowering at her in his deepest manner, Tywin begrudgingly forces himself down into the seat across from her, which only makes her smile broaden. “I think you forget on purpose sometimes. We work differently. People see my face.”

“And those people should be gone off on holiday so they can’t see you again,” Catelyn reminds him.

For the briefest of moments, Tywin’s lips twitch into something resembling a smile, but then it’s gone and she’s left to wonder if it ever really happened in the first place.

Some people might question why they speak to each other, why they converse so often, how they can actually stand the sight of one another. To answer them, Catelyn has nothing. It was an arrangement they came up with what felt like ages ago, completely on a whim, and it’s the one habit that neither of them seem capable of breaking. Their professional lives are as pristine as they are bloody, but this little piece of their personal lives is refreshingly...normal. Just two old friends going out for a cup of coffee, if they could really call themselves friends.

“So how are Jaime and Cersei?” Catelyn asks as she stirs her coffee a little more.

“Fine,” Tywin grumbles out tersely.

Catelyn glances up at him and then right back to her cup. “Robb will be graduating in May. Sometimes I can barely believe it - makes me feel old, seeing my boy all geared up for university. But I...do wish Ned could have been here to see it. He would have been proud.”

Tywin says nothing for a while. She know that talking about personal things makes him uncomfortable, but she can’t help herself. She loves her children more than anything in the world, more than her job, more than herself. A part of her can’t help but be curious to know exactly how Tywin feels about his own children, but he does his best to never talk about them for long. He says it’s too personal - they shouldn’t know these things about each other, lest it gets them in danger - but she knows that he’s far too careful to not know as much about her personal life as possible.

She also knows that talking about her late husband Eddard makes him incredibly uncomfortable; and that strikes her as both intriguing and troublesome.

“How is Tyrion enjoying his time studying abroad in…where was it again?”

“Thailand.”

“Ah, Thailand. So how is he fairing?”

Tywin grimaces. “I wouldn’t know. All he talks about are the women whenever he writes. I think he does it to aggravate me.”

At this, Catelyn laughs. “It is not difficult to do that, Tywin.”

Tywin gives her a look. She just smiles back innocent. Not difficult at all.

During the rest of their coffee break, Catelyn talks about all of her children – Sansa’s dreams of being a fashion designer (“She sews up the clothes when there’s a tear, not me. It’s almost embarrassing.”); how Bran has taken very well to his new service dog (“He named it Summer and it’s the middle of winter.”), her decision to continue Arya’s fencing training despite the impracticality of using a sword as a weapon (“A sword! It sounds positively barbaric and far too personal, but she loves it. No doubt you’d enjoy it more than me.”), and Rickon’s sudden aggression at school (“He didn’t do things like this before Ned. I have to wonder if he’s acting out to get attention, but then he won’t talk.”). As usual, Tywin never breathes a word about his three children, but he snorts, rolls his eyes, and gives advice often enough to let her know that he is listening.

They never once bring up the subject of work, except for that one time. It’s an unspoken rule that they don’t talk about it; and Catelyn is fine with that. Work is difficult enough as it is. Talking about it just makes her remember just how murky it can be.

They’re so different. She doesn’t know why he’s always so insistent that they continue meeting, despite their obvious differences. If anyone ever brought it up to one of their superiors, they would probably laugh. Catelyn Stark and Tywin Lannister meeting in public and talking about their everyday lives over a cup of coffee or warm cider? Absolutely preposterous. And yet it does. And a small part of her feels guilty over it. She knows that she shouldn’t – that in some way Tywin is the enemy, at least a rival businessman of sorts, but she enjoys herself. She would never tell anyone, not Robb or her younger brother Edmure or her uncle Brynden and certainly not her sister Lysa – but it’s just a strange guilty pleasure, being around Tywin. And she likes to think that she makes his seemingly cold life a little warmer.

Around fifty-five minutes later, when their coffees are gone and all that’s left are empty sugar and creamer packets, they part ways. Tywin has a business meeting to attend to – an honest-to-God business meeting, something she knows that he hates since he hates dealing face-to-face with anyone above him – and Catelyn must take her beloved SVD Dragunov to Luwin for a recalibration. Being a stay-at-home mother in the eyes of the public does have its perks and gives her a lot of free time to take care of a lot of business before her children get out of school. Catelyn has always been exceptional at balancing out her career and motherhood. Who says you can’t have it all?

As they step outside of the shop together, Tywin helps her shrug into her warm black coat. It’s a surprisingly gentle gesture from a man who has killed men with those same hands. He smoothes down the collar for her, his hands close to her neck, and she can’t help but think of the fibre wire that he no doubt keeps on his person at all times just in case. Whenever they meet, she does her best to keep their work out of her mind, forces herself to think that Tywin looks like a stockbroker in his crisp dark suit and bright red tie than a modern day assassin and that she’s the loving mother to five children and widow to a wonderful man. They’re just every day, average people, just like all those stories she makes up for the other people in the coffee shop.

But then Tywin gives her one last look – a look that tells her that he’s haunted by something that he refuses to say but keeps him coming back to her all the same – and she knows that they’re not average people and life is not a cheerful story. It’s bloody and it’s a mess and she’s a part of that circle.


	2. Crosshairs

Catelyn never told Tywin about the moment he was in her crosshairs.

They have coffee, lunch sometimes, and they’ve even had dinner once. They’ve begun to talk about their personal lives. She knows about his kids; he knows about hers. Neither of them was supposed to know where the other lives; they both do. Hell, they met in a hotel once, though she refuses to think about that moment, can’t think about it. She has nightmares about that night. But it’s a good night – a great night – and it upsets her sometimes to realize that one of her happiest memories is tainted by guilt.

“Are you with me?”

Catelyn blinked and looked up. She smiled. “Sorry, I was thinking.”

Tywin frowned at her. “I’ve never known you to be distracted. It’s very unlike you.”

“Robb’s sudden announcement that he’s getting married has thrown me off a bit,” Catelyn admitted. It’s the truth. But it’s also a lie. Robb’s engagement came out of nowhere, but it wasn’t causing her to be so blank at this time. It was Tywin. He was causing the problem. She shook her head. “Maybe this was a bad time.”

“Your message said it was urgent,” Tywin told her, sounding grave and aggravated. That only made her feel more embarrassed. She hated feeling like this. She’d never angered him before. She knew that he had something of a short temper – she’d learned that while doing surveillance on him – but she’d never caused this reaction from him.

Catelyn glanced up at him, running her finger along the rim of her wine glass. It was a nervous reaction. She hated it. This was why she did her work from a distance. Tywin was cold and calculated. He could look at his targets, stand right next to them, and never flinch. She preferred to look through a scope. It distorted everything; it made her feel like she was on another plane.

And so she did the only thing that she felt was right. Catelyn set the wine glass down on the table, reached up to place her hands on Tywin’s face, and kissed him on the mouth. Everything else was instinctive. He kissed her back just as ruthlessly, pushing her back against the wall so hard that the generic picture fell to the ground. They tore at each other’s clothes with a rage that neither of them had seen in the other, but both knew that they were capable of. They had to be angry about something in order to kill so effortlessly. It was a part of their jobs. It was a part of them. She would never be able to fix the shirt that she’d worn.

Catelyn didn’t know what she was thinking except that she wasn’t. She gasped at his mouth on her skin, her nails digging into him. When he finally managed to push her onto the bed, towering over her like the monster he looked like before he committed a hit. She wasn’t afraid of him. He wasted no time in pulling her pants and underwear down, ignoring any kindness. There was no time for that. Their private lives were devoted to death and there was no kindness in that either. Catelyn sometimes told herself that her way was at least quicker. One shot, done and done. Tywin’s method took time, sometimes minutes. And then he disposed of some bodies. It took planning. There was none of that in this and yet there was everything. They were rash with each other, pawing, grabbing, scratching, gasping, begging – and yet he knew exactly what to do with her. He touched her in all the right ways, just as she knew to do with him.

A condom was slipped on and he was in her and my God, no, but yes, please–

She buried her face into the crook on his neck, pulling him closer to her. His clothes were nearly entirely on, just his pants and such slipped down to his knees. _How pathetic am I that I would hide like this?_ she thought to herself for one moment before he pushed into her and she couldn’t breathe. One, two, three– She closed her eyes, concentrating on his movements and her breathing, and she whimpered as she grew closer and closer until it was all too much.

( _He’s having tea, not coffee, sitting in a café he’s never been to before. He thinks he’s good. He thinks he’s great. He’s wrong, of course. Egotistical, as all men in the same position as him are. He’s very careful, but she’s become adept at watching him. No one looks out for a woman seemingly past her prime; no one pays attention to the way she writes notes in a book, thinking maybe she’s some soccer mom hoping to write the next great novel. He never notices her or her blonde wig. But he’s interesting though. And he sits in her crosshairs ever so innocently, despite the fact that she’s seen him wrap a thin metal wire around a man’s neck, and she sighs._

_Flips open her phone and calls her client. “I can’t do this one.”_

_“What?”_

_“You heard me.”_

_“Are you kidding me? I paid you!”_

_She rolls her eyes. What a child. He thinks he can control her just because he’s handed over a check. He’s wrong. No man controls her. “I don’t give a damn that you paid me. I know everything about you, boy. Shall I turn my sight to you?”_

_He hangs up. She shakes her head and puts the burner cell away. The man at the café stands up and leaves. No, there’s something about this man that she needs to understand, needs to know, needs to feel. She hasn’t met anyone in her line of her work before. Maybe it’s time for a chat._ )

Catelyn came suddenly, biting her lip so she didn’t scream, but she moaned and dug into him and pulled him down to her, as if he might keep her together as she felt like she was coming apart. Tywin followed her soon after, breathing heavily and unevenly against her skin, and they moved together and awkwardly, but she didn’t care. This moment was never even. Slowly but surely, they came to a stop, breathing together, until Tywin pulled himself out of her and gathered himself again. Catelyn stared at the ceiling, counting to ten, until she stood up as well and fixed her clothes. The shirt would have to be hemmed. Now that she was thinking, it made her grimace. It was hot outside. She hadn’t worn a coat. This wouldn’t be easy to hide.

“You only do that when you’re nervous, you know,” Tywin suddenly said.

Catelyn turned her eyes to him. “Why would I be nervous around you?”

“You’re thinking too much.”

She smiled. “Don’t you always say that you can never think enough?”

Tywin stepped towards her, grabbing her wrist but gently. She could tell that he wanted to kiss her, but was hesitant to do so. Kissing her after this would be too gentle, too kind. It would mean too much. Sex is one thing. Intimacy is another that they can’t afford, not in their line of work. She wanted him to though. “We should head to dinner. Twenty minutes before our reservation.”

“So prompt,” Catelyn sighed, stepping up to kiss him on the cheek. It was all either of them could bear to do. “That’s dangerous, you know.”

“I hate being late,” Tywin grumbled.

“As do hit men,” Catelyn reminded him. But she didn’t need to do that. Tywin was prompt if nothing else. It was what had made him an easy target. It was what helped her fall in love with him. She was a foolish woman.


End file.
